Prior art microwave and data communications subscriber equipment in point to point or point to multipoint RF data transmission systems has typically been housed in separate enclosures. Generally, a prior art wireless RF data transmission subscriber station would consist of an antenna comprising one outdoor enclosure. A radio and RF to IF converters would be in at least one other enclosure, which might be outdoors. An indoor unit for a third enclosure maybe include IF to RF converts as well as analog to digital (A/D) and digital to analog (D/A) converters. A fourth unit would be a power supply to power the other units.
Interconnecting cables between such units disposed in separate enclosures is problematic. The prior art teaches making these connections using coax or waveguides. Both of these connection media suffer from a common problem, moisture ingress. Moisture is very lossy at microwave frequencies.
Another problem associated with the use of multiple enclosure units is the fairly complex level of technical skill necessary to install the separate units. The components are generally intended to be located in physically diverse locations both indoors and out. The time invested and/or the hourly rate of a technician necessary to properly install such a prior art configuration is considerable. To install prior art configurations with separate enclosures a number of specialized tools, some mechanical and some electronic, including test consoles to make sure that the service is properly enabled, are necessary. Generally, during prior art installations, an installer aligns or peaks the directional antenna toward a base station. With prior art physically separate components additional costs may be associated with locating one or more antennas on the roof of a building.
Additionally, prior art fixed data subscriber antennas fail to provide flexibility to change base stations as interference and line of sight changes dictate. This also further limits the placement of a data subscriber antenna as a fixed antenna would always require a clear line of sight to the base station to which it is linked. This may dictate that a prior art fixed data subscriber antenna be placed in a location outside of the users space such as the aforementioned rooftop. Further, the use of multiple enclosures as discussed above may render a prior art data subscriber station too bulky or impractical for installation in a user's space.
Typically prior art fixed point to point or point to multipoint data transmission systems have used fixed antennas. Oftentimes roof top mounted antennas as discussed above are necessary to avoid signal blockages. Where movable antennas have been employed, such as in radar, the technology suffers from disadvantages. A stationary radome typically is disposed around and encapsulates an antenna array that may rotate on a spindle. Hence, a prior art subscriber station might typically have a very large, stationary radome that defines a hard enclosure covering the entire volume that a moveable antenna rotates within. With a stationary radome, a requirement for convection air flow adjacent to cooling features of the enclosure associated with hot radio and signal processing electronics forces separation of the antenna from these electronics, resulting in two sub-enclosures. Though these two sub-enclosures may reside together on a common structure defining the overall device, the sub-enclosures have disparate and incompatible functions, one being to protect the moving antenna from weather and the other to dissipate heat. This packaging results in a much larger overall device that must be mounted on stand-offs or otherwise disposed away from a mounting surface in order to maintain convective airflow, thus making the overall device effectively still larger when installed. The bulkiness of this packaging generally forces separation of the electronics and the radome entirely. Therefore, the hot electronics associated with the radio and signal processing equipment of a prior art subscriber station might be separated from a prior art moveable antenna array so that heat generated by the electronics can be effectively dissipated and not trapped by the radome.